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<title>You Touched Me and Suddenly I Was A Lilac Sky by AU_Ruler</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27031963">You Touched Me and Suddenly I Was A Lilac Sky</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AU_Ruler/pseuds/AU_Ruler'>AU_Ruler</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>faded colours and stars [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Divergence, Constellation AU, F/F, Past Character Death, Whumptober 2020, breathe in breath out, della duck constellation au, is something burning?, no.13, no.14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:40:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>988</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27031963</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AU_Ruler/pseuds/AU_Ruler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She wasn't dead, not anymore</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Della Duck/Selene</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>faded colours and stars [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968796</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>You Touched Me and Suddenly I Was A Lilac Sky</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Breathe</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The voice was soft yet commanding. Goading her to open her beak and take a gulp of brisk air. It came in like mint. Sharp and piercing. Cold. She coughed it out. Hacking and painful. On instinct her body took in another breath. This one was less shocking on her system.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After she'd taken a few breaths, Della opened her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The world was dark. The world was bright. Everything around her was the blackness of midnight. But stars filled every corner of that blackness. It reminded her of when her, Donald, Gladstone, and Fethry lied out on Grandma’s large picnic blanket in the dead of night on summer evenings, lightning bugs flashing all around as cicadas sung their tune. Except it was quiet. And the stars weren't in the sky, they were all around her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe, they were in the sky. And she was up there with them. Della clenched her eyes back shut. Where was she? Space? It had to be. But.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Uncle… Scrooge. He'd made her rocket. It must have worked. Except that didn't </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel</span>
  </em>
  <span> right. Not fully. A half truth. Something important had happened.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A hand touched her and she startled. Her eyes flickered open again. In her vision was Selene. The moon goddess smiled gently at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Breathe,” she said and Della knew she was the one who'd spoken earlier. “Gentle now, Della. In and out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Della followed Selene’s instructions. Taking one breath. Two. Three. Four. In and out. The whole time Selene smiled gently. A hint of… </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> in her eyes. Not something Della’d ever remembered seeing. Something sad. She reached out a hand, touched her wife’s cheek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Selene?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The smoke wavered at the corner. Selene’s hand moved to cover hers, larger hand engulfing it. “I'm sorry.” Her voice didn't lose its gentle edge. But it cracked. Right in the middle, ‘rry’ a pitch higher and sadder than ‘so’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before Della could ask what she meant, Selene took her other hand and held it up to her, showing her the back of her hand. There was a star there. Painted on her feathers like a tattoo. Except it pulsed, dimming and brightening like a living thing. Like a real star. Suddenly she felt like she couldn't breath. Oxygen choking in her lungs. Falling through water, floating through space. Deprived of air, vision darkening.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I'm-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.” Selene pressed her hand against Della’s chest. Energy thrummed under her feathers. Multiple beats played against her hand. “Not anymore.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But how?” Della knew she'd died. The memories were fuzzy, but they were there. Selene looked away. She let go of Della’s hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You're a constellation now. I’m sorry I-” There was a pause. In the years they’d been together, Selene didn’t get like this often. She’d get sincere. Calm. But the way she looked now. Worried and sad and scared, eyes on the floor and Della was sure she could see her biting her beak- she didn’t get like this. “I couldn’t lose you. Not like that. Not </span>
  <em>
    <span>now</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Della bit her own beak and turned Selene to look at her. When Selene did, Della smiled at her. Gentle and soft.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Della’s always warm now. It was almost funny. Donald used to complain about how she always felt cold. But the stars that made up her veins kept her heated. Insides almost burning at times. The difference from when she was alive- </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> alive, not just a soul kept alive by stars and written into a constellation- was blatant. Not to the outsider. Unless they saw the stars stitched into her skin. Anyone who’d known her before, though,  would know. The second they touched her and felt the heated skin they’d know.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Donald</span>
  </em>
  <span> would know. There were so few differences between this body and her old one. The stars like tattoos on the backs of her hands, elbows, shoulders, feet, hips, tail, and at her core. How her eyes now shined. Because unlike Selene tried to assure her, she knew her eyes had never shone like that before. The longer hair and stardust that glittered through it like fairy hair. Her twin would catch them all at a glance. No matter how she hid it, he’d see it and know. Maybe not that she was no longer alive as she’d once been. That she was immortal. Just like yet so different from Uncle Scrooge. But he’d </span>
  <em>
    <span>notice</span>
  </em>
  <span> the change.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it would hurt him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She couldn’t hurt him anymore than she already had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So she stayed on Ithaquack and hid in Selene’s temple. Neither Storkules nor Zeus knew she was there. If they found out, Zeus would like try to throw her off the island. Apparently he’d thrown quite the fit after the last time Uncle Scrooge, her, and Donald had been there. It was easy to stay in the temple. She didn’t need food anymore. Not water or sun. They played games and Della took on the other adjoining rooms in the temple. Even without the need for everything else, she still needed adventure. Needed mystery and danger like she’d needed air. Selene and her temple provided a best they could.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the days-barely days, more like hours and minutes and seconds- she missed her family, her boys and her brother and her uncle, Selene gave her an orb. It allowed her to keep an eye on them all. Allowed her to watch her boys grow up. To see Donald gain and lose job after job. To see Uncle Scrooge empty the money bin and himself til they were both a shell. To see the little girl that came to live with Uncle Scrooge and come to view her as her own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Selene had her own orb. One with old memories on it. She kept it hidden from Della. Always hidden, a challenge for Della that she’d yet to overcome. But one day. One day she would.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had nothing but time, now.</span>
</p>
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